It took the United States eight years to get a man on the moon, but it’s going to take transit officials almost 12 years to get a new high-speed “bus rapid transit” system onto one of San Francisco’s busiest corridors. The Van Ness Avenue project, which in 2006 was projected to open at the end of this year — in time for the Muni centennial — has been pushed back four more years, largely because transit planners had underestimated the time needed to complete the environmental work and project planning.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., has come out swinging on environmental causes, linking the nation’s longer term economic prospects to growth in the green energy industry. She railed against corporations for sending jobs overseas, vowing to eliminate their tax breaks and reward those who build an environmentally benign economy at home. She is running a high-profile race against GOP opponent Carly Fiorina.

For years, a lack of information left Muni in the dark about what it was doing well, what it had to improve and what its riders actually needed. But a proposed shuffling of resources following the Transit Effectiveness Project, a massive systemwide study, would add more frequent service and extend routes on some express lines serving city commuters.

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